


whose house are you haunting tonight?

by hanthelibrarian



Series: Promptober 2020 [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Ben Hanscom's Journey Toward Self-Love and Accepting the Love of Others, F/M, Gen, How Do I Tag, Nobody is Dead, Original Location, Post-Canon, Promptober 2020, after It, extension of canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:13:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26777185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hanthelibrarian/pseuds/hanthelibrarian
Summary: The door slowly creaked shut behind him as Ben made his way deeper into the entryway. He’d come here alone, against the advice of literally everyone, but he knew that what was hidden away in here, what had haunted him for so long, was something that he had to face alone. Bev couldn’t help him now, none of the Losers could.From the outside, the house looked inviting, a classic North-East American home; the windows were covered from the inside with clean and bright curtains and the porch had an array of chairs, benches, and plants. Nothing looked unordinary; at least, not to those who had never been inside.Growing up as a child, Ben had passed by this house many times on his way to school and not once had he seen anyone coming or going from the property. The door always remained shut, the curtains permanently drawn, and it was all so eerily quiet. That is until one day...
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh (mentioned)
Series: Promptober 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1952227
Comments: 8
Kudos: 9





	whose house are you haunting tonight?

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Day 2 of Promptober using a prompt list from a writing discord server I'm in! The theme was Haunted/Haunting.

The door slowly creaked shut behind him as Ben made his way deeper into the entryway. He’d come here alone, against the advice of literally everyone, but he knew that what was hidden away in here, what had haunted him for so long, was something that he had to face alone. Bev couldn’t help him now, none of the Losers could. 

From the outside, the house looked inviting, a classic North-East American home; the windows were covered from the inside with clean and bright curtains and the porch had an array of chairs, benches, and plants. Nothing looked unordinary; at least, not to those who had never been inside. 

Growing up as a child, Ben had passed by this house many times on his way to school and not once had he seen anyone coming or going from the property. The door always remained shut, the curtains permanently drawn, and it was all so eerily quiet. That is until one day Ben had been chased by the neighborhood bullies into the yard of the Quiet House, as he had taken to calling it. No one had ever gone onto the green grass that surrounded the perfectly maintained house; perhaps no one had wanted to disturb whoever lived there or perhaps it was just another weird thing about this town, like how no one acknowledged the numerous reports of missing children, despite the town’s population being quite small.

That day, when he had been driven onto the grass by the bullies, he had first noticed that the green grass, always so well taken care of, had withered and dried up beneath his hands. He looked up and saw that all of the grass had become dry and looked as if it could break off and float along the wind any second. The next thing he noticed was the smell. Vomit, urine, shit, rotten eggs, rotten  _ flesh _ . All of them hit him at once and he had to cover his mouth with both of his hands to hold back a wave of nausea that nearly sent him reeling into the street. He was so distracted by the curdling in his stomach that he almost didn’t see the house. Almost.

The house had changed, much as the lawn had, and Ben could feel his breath quicken as he took in just how dilapidated the house had become, simply because he had crossed onto the property line. The windows had been smashed, glass laying in the yard, sunlight glinting off of the shards threateningly. The curtains that he had once wished his own house had were torn to shreds, thick stripes of fabric flowing in the now wicked fast breeze. The porch was broken down so much that as Ben approached it he began to think back to Eddie and his broken arm. If he tried to climb up the stairs and into the house, he’d end up just like him maybe. Nothing about the house was the same as he had seen mere moments ago. 

Ben turned to face the street, half hoping that the bullies were still there, that they were seeing this too, but they had gone. In fact, it looked like everyone had gone. There was no one on the street; no cars, no pedestrians, not even a squirrel. It was as if Derry had become a ghost town. The thought scared Ben, made him want to run back down the street to his house, see if his mother had left him too. But something kept him there, turned him back to face the house, and pushed him toward the crumbling porch steps. He could hear something; a whisper? Yes, something was whispering to him but he couldn’t quite make it out. He strained to hear, tread carefully closer and closer until he found his right foot resting on the first step. He put a little weight on it and it held.  _ Perhaps it’s not as dangerous as it looks,  _ he thought as he made his way up the broken steps.

As he got closer to the top step, the front door creaked open and more of that stench wafted out. Ben wrinkled his nose and tried to ignore it but it was stifling. Trudging his way up the stairs, he counted out his breaths, tried to stay calm. Nothing was going to happen; this is just another one of IT’s tricks. Except this time, Ben didn’t have his friends to help him. He was nearly at the doorway, about to decide whether to go in or turn around when he heard her.

“Ben!” Beverly screamed, her voice high-pitched and tight; he could tell that she was hurt and he rushed forward into the house, not realizing that the door had shut behind him.

“Beverly!” He called out, running as fast as he could down the hallway, following her voice as she kept screaming and screaming. “Beverly, where are you?”

Suddenly, everything became quiet. Ben couldn’t even hear the sound of his own breath. That’s when he knew, when he realized, perhaps a moment too late, that this was a trap. Beverly wasn’t in this house, trapped and hurt. She was safe and on a date with Bill. His stomach lurched again but this time not because of the smell.

“Jealousy doesn’t look good on you, Benny-boy,” a voice from behind him said, both familiar and yet new. He slowly turned, eyes shut as he knew that what he saw would haunt him for years to come. “Come on, Benny, give me a kiss.”

His eyes flung open as he realized who it was or rather, who it was supposed to be. “Mom?”

She was old now, wrinkled and decaying. She looked like something from out of a horror movie, one that he could never finish because of how scared the monsters always made him. And now a monster is standing right before him, grinning at him with his mother’s mouth, whispering to him with his mother’s voice, reaching out to him with his mother’s hand. 

Just as she was about to reach him, another voice spoke but this time it was in the back of his mind.

_ Run. _

And he did. He ran and he ran until he broke through the front door and scrambled down the broken steps, tripping and twisting his ankle on the boards jutting out from all angles. He ran down the yard to the sidewalk and pushedpushedpushed his legs to run and run until they couldn’t run anymore. 

Now down the street a good distance, Ben turned back, saw the Quiet House shift back to it’s normal (or as normal as a haunted, possessed house can be) state. There were people around him again, he wasn’t alone. At least, not physically. But what that whole experience had truly done was not scare him; no, it merely reminded him that despite having friends who he would die for, he was still quite alone.

Now 40 years old, Ben was back in that house, searching for the disgusting ghoul that had haunted his dreams for years without him really knowing why. He wanted to end this, to take back some kind of control over his life. He needed to do this, even if the others didn’t understand. And how could they? IT was dead now; they had killed IT months ago. But Ben knew that he would never be able to sleep soundly again unless he checked.

The house no longer had that pure middle-class American facade covering up its disgusting truth. Anyone walking along the street could now see it in all its run-down, safety-code violation glory. It seemed like a terrible place to live and many of the town’s residents were now worried about property value, their children’s safety, and other things that had never mattered to them before IT’s influence on them had faded. He would be doing the town a favor in buying this property and tearing down the house that has haunted his dreams for decades. It would be the perfect place to build a companion monument to the Missing Children’s Memorial, something he had been thinking of ever since the seven of them had crawled up out of the sewers and out of the house on Neibolt street. Perhaps this property would become a park; a place where children could feel safe. God knows this town was in need of a place like that.

Ben had half expected the house to have caved in, much like the Neibolt House had. When he saw that it hadn’t, there was some part of him that had risen to the surface with the knowledge that this house was different. It wasn’t a part of IT. This house was something else, something dangerous only to him. IT had merely used it as a prop, just like he had with the fake-Beverly all those years ago. 

As he clambered through the house, its paint peeling off the walls, Ben could feel something in the air, something sinister. Perhaps this house truly was haunted after all. Perhaps his assumptions were right and IT had seen the house, seen what it held, and used it to push Ben further and further away from his friends. In the end, though, IT had actually pushed him right into his friends’ waiting arms. He was loved, he was wanted, he was enough.

He was standing in the same place now that he had been all those years ago, when he had heard his mother’s raspy ghoul-like voice. He had run home afterward and hugged his mother as hard as he could for as long as he could. Now he no longer feared losing her because she was already lost to him, cancer having taken her five years before.

Ben stood there, eyes closed, chest heaving with the deep breaths he took. No smell of shit, no smell of corpses or vomit. All he could smell was his own cologne, something Bev had given him on a whim. He had never been one to wear cologne but now? Now this was the one thing he never left home without. The scent was delightful and comforting in the darkness of the house and he found himself thinking about Bev, about their baby growing inside her. He thought about his friends and how much he loved them, how much  _ they _ loved  _ him _ . He spun around to face the door and smiled as he opened his eyes. Nothing had happened; there was no ghoul, no decaying corpse come to haunt him. He was free and more importantly, he knew he was loved.

There was a faint sound then, a cracking, that grew louder and louder and Ben recognized it from his first worksite where a contractor nearly got crushed under the falling structure, his men not having secured the top beam correctly. As Ben ran out of the house, dodging falling debris and dust clouds, he laughed. He laughed and laughed and laughed until he was outside again, collapsed onto the lawn. There would be no more haunting in his dreams. He was free.

  
  



End file.
